fixing a soundblaster Audigy 2 crackling problem
if your Soundblaster Audigy 2 is crackling through the speakers and it is driving you nuts, this fix worked for me:
I went to the windows default sound control and muted: MIDI Synth, CD Audio and Line-In and the crackling went away. My installation doesn't have any of the creative programs, I just installed the drivers for the card.
I got this idea from a user named Justor on the Planetamd64 forums (last post):
I finally figured out what is going on with the audigy 2 ZS
Crackling is GONE! Thank God almost bought another sound card.
You wont believe what it was something stupid as usual!
When I went into the audio controls ... line-in2/mic2 was un-muted (I never messed with them but somehow it was checked un-muted... so it had a mic spot open without a mic
I started muting stuff and see if it goes away.. so I looked closer at the windows audio panel and it was un-muted as soon as I hit that one went away and when I brought it back un-muted it came right back (I was hearing the sounds in windows and in games)Just wanted to share the love before someone went out and grabbed a new sound card (funny thing is when I called creative there only response was sounds like a bad SB go get another one. LOL figures huh)